Scars
by SarahIntheSky
Summary: Oneshot. Arcade learns that the Courier has more scars than the one on her temple. T for language. New Vegas belongs to Bethesda, Sarah is my own.


Arcade collapsed into a chair the minute they got back to the Lucky 38. He couldn't believe they had made it to the Strip in one piece. Boone had been covering them with his rifle, but no one had expected the gang of Fiends to come out of nowhere.

_Stupid. We were directly in the middle of Fiend Territory._

Like she could read his mind, the Courier walked over and gave him an encouraging smile. "Hey, at least we got that supply cache, right? That oughta be worth it."

Arcade smiled back as Rex trotted over excitedly to the pair. Sarah was always happy like this. Now, Arcade wasn't anything close to a pessimist, but she put him to shame. He nodded back.

"Awesome. Anywho, I think I'm gonna go sleep this buzz off, that was a pretty rough fight back there. Tell Ronnie we got the shipment, ok?"

Now this was something. Sarah usually trapezed around the casino after a big fight like this, reenacting the battle to anyone who would Arcade was watching her walk away, stiffly.

"Uh, sure. No problem." Arcade settled in and had just about put it out of his mind when Boone walked in and made a beeline for the doctor.

"Arcade. Where's Sarah?"

"She went to go sleep, or something like that. Why?"

"Did she get you to fix her shoulder?"

Arcade's eyes widened. "What?"

"She took a hit in the back of the shoulder from one of the Fiends. Looked pretty bad. I'm guessing that's a no then."

"No, but I'll check it out now." Boone nodded and made for the whiskey in Cass's special fridge.

"Hey, thanks for the cover back there!"

"Fuck you. There were geckos on that mountain."

"Sure."

Arcade made for his companion's closed door. _Boone doesn't miss a trick with that scope of his. This probably explains her odd behavior just now._

He opened the door, slowly, and peered into the dark room. "Sarah? Boone says you got shot. This isn't funny." He shut the door behind him and searched the bed for her small frame. He fell silent at what he saw.

Sarah was sitting on the bed, her back to the door, a pile of bandages in her lap and a discarded stimpack at her side. Her bright blue shirt was on the floor, a large blood stain appearing that was previously hidden by her leather armor. She had been fiddling with the gauze in her hands, but became eerily still when she heard Arcade enter the room. He immediately noticed the blood trickling from a large bullet wound in the middle of her shoulder blade.

Then Arcade saw that Sarah had more scars than the one Benny gave her on her temple.

There were dozens of them; not a square inch of her back was untouched by the deep grooves. Some of them were wide and long, others barely 2 inches long, but packed tightly together, running crisscross from her hips, beneath her bra, all the way up to the back of her neck. They looked angry and untreated, though they had clearly been there for years.

Arcade could tell that Sarah was ashamed. The silence was evidence enough for that. So he decided to downplay it as much as he could, without completely ignoring the fact that he'd seen something she obviously would have rather kept hidden.

_Let her talk about it if she wants to. God knows you're no people person._

Arcade sighed heavily. "Let me help you."

Thankfully, Sarah simply nodded.

Arcade worked silently; Sarah stared intently at a point on the peeling wall while he tweaked her shoulder, lost in thought. When he got the bullet out and bandaged up the wound, he sat down next to her on the bed.

"Do you...do you want to tell me about it?"

Sarah glanced up at him, but just as quickly looked away and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath.

"You know I don't remember anything. Not a thing but my name. So I can't explain it. But I can tell you this." Her voice hitched a little. " When I walked through Nipton, there were people dying on crosses, burned skeletons on piles of flaming tires, and heads stuck on pikes lining the road. But there were other bodies too. Bodies lying face down in the dirt, with their shirts ripped off. Men, women, children. All with these same marks on their backs. Except theirs were fresh. I've seen them on slaves too. All the same scars as mine. And that makes me think."

Arcade was stunned. He couldn't believe that she had come this far with that burden. The burden of knowing.

Part of him wanted to run away from this Legion slave that he'd technically been harboring, but he shut that part of him out. He had no right to judge on past lives.

_This girl is broken. She needs someone right now. And I guess it's better me than Boone or Cass._

So Arcade Gannon reached out and took Sarah the Courier's hand, and for once, in that silent moment, scars didn't matter anymore.


End file.
